From the Inside
by smileymcface
Summary: When Shepard and Jack visited the Teltin facility, they found an old datapad owned by a guard named Kal Riften. This datapad was a journal of Kal's time at the facility, and it showed a side of the facility that Jack never knew existed.
1. Chapter 1

Entry 1:

Well this is a shitty little dirtball. What exactly am I supposed to be guarding? Well whatever, they told me to document my time here so I am. This is day one for me, Cerberus Patrol Officer 1st class Kal Riften, maybe fifteen minutes post-landing on Teltin. My superior just handed me this datapad and told me to document my time here. He said to make it personal and not too formal, so here ya go.

So, what I know so far- 1) My bullet wound and the implant still hurts like a motherfucker and if I find that doc who told me I'd be fine in a month or two and cleared me to work again, I'm gonna smile as I watch his face turn blue in my hands. 2) It's raining. 3) Nobody is going to read this, but I've been ordered to keep a journal. 4) I'm too old for a fucking diary. And 5) It smells funny here.

After a brief debriefing, which consisted of being told the name of the planet, being spoon fed some crap about us "Breaking new ground in human evolution" at this facility, and being handed this datapad with orders to write stuff in it, I've been sent to my quarters where I am now. I have no idea who or what I'm here to guard, but when I transferred I was assured that this would be a cushy job for me to heal during. The scars at the base of my neck still hurt and from time to time I'm convinced that the nerve bundle wire that's helping me walk is twitching, which is annoying, but hey, after having the back of my neck blown off, it is definitely nice to be able to walk again. The first week after I regained consciousness really sucked as docs would touch my toes with pointy objects and I couldn't feel them. I really figured I wouldn't walk again at that point. Then surgery on my neck, being told about the implanted nerve box thing that is making my brain-stem receive signals correctly again, and now I can walk. So I guess I shouldn't complain too much.

I'll be given my first orders tomorrow morning at the 0600 debriefing and I guess I'll figure out more then. There were a couple of other people scheduled to attend so, since it's a small crowd, I figure it must be a new-guy pep talk. But we'll see.

So uh, yeah, goodnight diary, sleep well and I'll be back again soon like a little fucking school girl to tell you all about who's cute and who wore what and all that shit. I swear...if I catch myself starting these off with "Dear Diary:" I'll kill myself.

* * *

Entry 2:

So, now that I've been here for a few days, I get what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm a security guard. This is a research facility of sort, and I'm to guard shipments of materials as they come in. There are a bunch of specialized docs here, one of them actually offered to tweak my neck implant, which he referred to as a "cerebral stimulator," whatever the hell that means.

I have very low, entry level clearance, as would be expected for the new guy, but so far so good. This really is a cushy job and the only action I have seen thus far was breaking up a verbal argument between a fellow guard and a cook over whether or not the "chicken" was real. I'm siding with the guard on this one, that mystery meat was definitely varren. They're native to this area, well, to be accurate they're an invasive species that is now impossible to get rid of, and other guards go out and hunt them on their time off. Hopefully, after I've been here for a while, I'll get to tag along with one of the hunting parties and blow off some steam.

So yeah, been a pretty calm week so far.

* * *

Entry 3:

It's been about a week and a half between this entry and the last, and my my has it been a great few days. Man, I love this place. Turns out that the doc who wanted to fix my cerebral stimulator is a neuroscientist who specializes in implants! What luck! And no shit, but his last name is Holiday. My doctor, is fucking Doc Holiday. How cool is that? But anyways, Doc Holiday tinkered with my implant and did a minor surgery to improve the interface between my real nerves and the nerve fibers in the implant. I have no idea what he did, but I feel awesome. I have so much more energy, my bench press weight has begun to climb, I can feel the air currents around me, I can actually see better now than ever, I don't get as tired during PT. It's great.

Actually, I think that his tinkering has like, heightened my ability or something. Today during hand-to-hand combat drills, I sorta lost my cool (which is weird for me, I can usually hold my temper better, but this guy was pissing me off) and I knocked out a former Centurion. A Centurion! It was incredible. I got angry at his taunts and something just snapped and it was like, I don't know how to explain it, but it's like I knew what he was going to do before he did it. So when he swung at me, I wasn't even there anymore. I gave him a few body shots to knock him back a pace or two, then boom, my foot was hitting his jaw. Knocked him out cold. The other guards cheered and the instructor cracked a rare smile as he helped the Centurion back to his feet. Drills were cut short as the instructor took him to the infirmary.

A few days back I was given "Burn-out duty" which has been fun. Basically, this planet is a hyperactive green house. It rains every day, and the forest grows like crazy. The upside of this is that every guard is on a rotation, and for a whole week, they just run around the grounds and burn shit. We don't even put out the fires because it's assured to rain soon. It's great. Because the facility is pretty secretive, a lot of the time I'm on the roof with a flamethrower burning everything I can reach, but every three days we go groundside and burn off the plants that are trying to work their way through the walls.

I've gone groundside twice so far and it's kinda surprising, but the facility doesn't appear to go under ground much. Most "Secret Base" type places that I have worked over the years have had enormous underground labs and shit, but not this one. It's strange.

But anyways, my omni-tool just buzzed, so I gotta go. It's Burnin' Time!

* * *

Entry 4:

Captain's log: Stardate 463-Zulu-Niner. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, and uh, that's all I remember of that old show. Ha, it's kinda funny really, my dad grew up watching that show, so of course he made me watch it when I was growing up. Just imagine, what those people thought the future was, and how wrong they were. I wish my dad could see me now. It would blow his mind. I have insane reaction times now. I talked to Doc Holiday (ha, never gets old) about it and he mentioned that the cerebral implant that's helping me walk is actually a piece of military grade hardware. Turns out, that the Doc has simply been removing the medical software, and updating it with its original military software! Crazy right!?

Me and the Centurion I laid out have been sparring a lot lately. He even got out the old military gear to help him keep up with me. He's been teaching me a lot. Easier ways to incapacitate, how to disarm, how to kill, and a whole lot of anti-biotic fighting. I know that the asari are biotic, so I guess if I ever have to fight them it will help. The anti-biotic training has been interesting. It's a mix of stay the fuck away, get as close as possible, and be lightning fast. It's fascinating, probably useless as I've never even met a live biotic, but still, it's neat.

In further news, I'm off of the burn patrol and I'm now making general rounds. I'm still confined to the upper levels of the facility but I'm under orders to study the maps of the lower levels for a future promotion, so that's exciting. We actually hit a red alert yesterday. Something must have exploded on one of the lower levels because the whole facility shook suddenly one day and the alert was triggered moments later. I headed to block an exit just as a team of guards in riot gear ran by headed for the stairs. They must have been training as well because riot gear won't help much in a fire, but at least those poor saps lower down got some help. The damage must have been bad though because a few of the lower guards were in the infirmary with an assortment of broken bones, lacerations, and crushed digits. A researcher died in the explosion, I saw the body as they wheeled it away from the infirmary and the explosion must have taken down a wall or thrown some heavy debris or something. The side of his head was perfectly flat, like a chunk of the ceiling fell and hit him or something. It was a bummer.

But on a happier note, I killed a varren yesterday! It had managed to make it to the roof and the burn team reported it over the radio. I headed outside right as the burn team was chasing it past my exit. Me and the varren collided and my crazy reflexes kicked in and I broke it's neck before it even scratched me. It was awesome. I'm still cleaning off a tooth and letting it dry so I can wear it as a necklace. I'm pretty excited about it. But anyways, that's been it.

* * *

Entry 5:

I've been working the lower levels for about a month now, and it's much busier down there. Turns out that this facility is in fact a biotic research facility. I came across a sick kid the other day who had somehow managed to get out of the intensive care ward and I brought him to my level's ground-boss. He seemed pissed that the kid was out on his own. The poor kid was so sick, I was pissed too, whatever nurse let this kid slip away should have their ass beat. He was shivering even though it's warm, his skin was pale and he kept having these really bad coughing fits. Strange part was, sometimes, when he really got to coughing, he would glow blue. The kid was a biotic! As I understand it, which I really don't, a biotic gets really sick as a kid from Eezo exposure, and if they manage to survive, then they can manipulate the dark energy that the Eezo dumped into their systems, or something like that. I took a really long shower after dealing with that kid. I'm pretty sure that adults can't adapt to Eezo exposure like kids can and I don't want to die. Hope the kid makes it though. The more biotics that humanity has then the better equipped we'll be if those asari ever decide to give us lip.

My implant is no longer giving me trouble and all of my advantages from it have leveled out. Doc Holiday says that now the stimulator is no longer stimulating nerve development, but is now simply maintaining what it has done already. So basically, I'm not going to get any faster or tougher from this thing, which sucks. I've been having fun at getting better at things without practicing.

I've killed more varren. I'm not wearing my tooth necklace anymore, it got old as I kept having to kill them. Its losing it's sport at this point. I got into a fist fight in the hallway to the showers with some guard I'd never seen before. He bumped my shoulder and I swear he did it on purpose. So I decked him. Then all of his buddies jumped me. It was me against eight guys and my reflexes were really paying off until I took a blow to the back of my head, it must have jarred the implant because for a split second I was frozen, and that was all they needed. They held me on the ground and kicked me for a while until the ground boss arrived and broke up the fight. Luckily, no reports were filed.

We got a shipment of what appeared to be giant pills today. These huge tube things were easily the size of an adult varren, but I have no idea what they contained. Hopefully it was better food. Maybe some fruit. That would be nice.

* * *

Entry 6:

Today sucked. I had to kill a researcher. There was another red alert and something had happened to the guy and his insides were all mushed. It was the middle of the night and all of the docs were asleep in the upper level and red alert locks down the facility so only guards can open the airlocks. The guy was coughing up blood and my military experience told me he was a gonner. He was in pain and dying and the docs were locked in their rooms. I broke his neck in the infirmary. I don't want to write anymore about it.

* * *

Entry 7:

Another promotion. I've been planetside for over a year now so I'm permitted to the ground levels. They're testing kids for biotic potential in my wing. It's a lot louder down at ground level. I'm not allowed in blue wing yet but that's where the noise is always coming from. We get sick kids from all over the galaxy who have been exposed to Eezo in my wing, yellow wing. We try to help them as best we can, but they are almost always at death's doorstep and the best we can do is try to learn from them in order to help others later on.

I've seen dozens of dying kids in the past few weeks and they don't bother me much anymore. It's just part of it. I haven't written in a while because it was hard to write everything down right after it happened. But I can handle it now. I'm being called away at the moment, another kid just came in, I'll be right back.


	2. Chapter 2

Entry 8

Ok, so, the kids. Damn, the kids have sucked. The kids that get cryo-shipped to us are sick Eezo babies. My wing tests for biotic potential. Some of the kids that we get come from Red Sand homes and even manufactories. The latent Red Sand as their parents use or develop the Sand manifests itself as a biotic sickness. When adults use Red Sand, they can use some minor biotics for a little while, have a nice high and whatnot, but when it hits a kid while they're growing up, it hits them hard. So we figure out the cause of the bio-sickness. The Sand kids we can typically treat, re-seal into cryo, and send them to a different facility for treatment.

The other kids though, the ones who test positive for Eezo exposure, we then test for the levels of exposure, or something like that. I'm not really sure. My job is somewhere between keeping order and being an armored lab assistant. Most of these kids are upset about being in our facility, and my wing gets them right after reanimation, so they tend to be confused too. A small number of these kids have already developed latent abilities that I then get to deal with as smaller equipment starts whipping around the room. I've been pelted with more pencils in the past month or so than all of my awkward high school years combined. Anyways, these kids we hit with a bio-inhibitor so they're easier to handle.

The kids who had enough biotic potential get sent to blue wing. Blue wing is the loud one. I'm not entirely sure what goes on in there, but I'm pretty sure it deals with forced dark energy manipulation. The kids move from blue to yellow pretty consistently as we check up on their feedback levels to see if anything changed from the blue tests. It's sad, but necessary. These kids are dying anyways from this, new cancer that is destroying their bodies. They'll die, and others will die. We're testing them so that maybe we can save others down the line. The doc who explained it to me mentioned early psychological testing back on earth. Apparently we did all sorts of rough experiments back then that gave us good information on how our minds work now. That's all we're doing. Gotta do some dirty work before you can get to the clean stuff.

The first kid I had die on me was one hell of a shock. She was a little five, maybe six year old girl, blonde, blue eyed, a cute little girl, designation 5-SE, but I called her Suzy. She tested positive for Eezo exposure and tested high enough on our scale to move forward with further testing. The poor girl, she was such a happy little girl, but she was obviously always in so much pain. Even when I first saw her after reanimation, she was hurting. Then the experiments, the testing for bio-feedback, the implant installation, the forced manipulation of energy fields. I never saw these tests, but I could see the results. They would bring her in every few days, test her biotic levels, then head back, they didn't tell me what was going on, but I know what I saw. The obvious surgery marks, the burned out veins from the bio-feedback systems, the skin on her hands being raw with the tips of her fingers seeming actually burned. She was a mess. But she had a beautiful smile. When we set the exposure crown thing on her head to test her biotic levels, I would smile at her to try to keep her calm, and she would smile back. Pain, crying, being scared, wearing bizarre testing apparatuses, it didn't matter, she smiled back at me every, single, time.

Then, one day, little Suzy came in and she was definitely messed up. She wasn't crying, but she was definitely in shock. Her blood vessels in her eyes had burst and her eyes were solid red, she had some sort of pads on her chest and back that were smoking, her hands looked like they'd been put in boiling water, and her hair had been singed by something. She looked like she was taken from a blown up building. She was rolled in in a wheelchair and I said something, I don't remember what, something along the lines of "oh no." and the doc I worked with spun towards me and told me to shut the fuck up, and he went to work. Everybody was freaking out about getting her levels tested as fast as possible. They might have been able to save her, but the tests were too important. The first time I saw her I knew that she would be dead soon, and as they keep reminding me, "Death is not worthless if we learn something from it."

We set the crown on her head and began scanning. The doc gasped and smiled, so I guess the test had some good results, blue wing must be getting their shit together, and I smiled at little Suzy to try and calm her down. Her big blue eyes turned towards me, and she began to smile back, and stopped mid grin. Her face just froze. Slowly, her face changed, the left side of her face scrunched up, her mouth opened in a silent scream, and she began shaking. The doc was still smiling as he took the crown off of her head, he was so excited about her results, and spouting scientific nonsense to the other research guys in the room. By the time the crown was off she was having a full blown seizure. Her eyes started bleeding, I heard her fingers break under the stress, the doctor was talking to the guys who brought her in and they were all excited. I was the only one watching the little girl die. They told us in basic that everyone dies alone, but I couldn't do it, I could not let her die alone. I went over while they weren't looking and took her hand, and her skin burned me. I still have the scar on my palm. I shushed her quietly and calmly, and told her it would be over soon, I told her to sleep, that the dreams would help. She looked me straight in the eye, bloody tears running down her face, and I held her gaze until slowly, her eyes closed.

"At least she didn't die alone." I remember muttering right after. The doc looked at me with a strange expression on his face. "Your first one?" he asked. I told him yes and he keyed his omnitool. A few minutes later another guard came in and I was relieved for the day. I went back to my bunk, and didn't cry, I just laid there in silence for hours, Suzy's red eyes burning into mine.

The next day I had a sit down with doc Holiday. He told me that kids die all the time and that they'll die anyways and all that stuff I'd heard a thousand times. It was somehow different coming from him though. He was a friend, he had really helped me out over the year or so, what with my implant and stuff. He made it all seem ok. And he was right. I haven't named anymore of the kids, but I've watched them die nonetheless. It sounds bad, but you get used to it, everyone agrees. That's Cerberus for ya though. We do the hard work that everyone else is too pussy-footed to handle. Then, once we get the good information, everyone else just gobbles it up.

I've already seen improvements in the kids too. The doc I work with in the testing lab's name is O'Connell. When I came back to work after the first kid, me and him had a good talk, and he explained to me what the testing was showing, and ever since, once the kids leave again, he shows me that kid's results. Basically, blue wing is enhancing these kid's ability to cope with, and manipulate the dark energy that their bodies are storing. Yellow wing, then checks to see if those enhancements are working. The results are incredible. He showed me some cases from back when he started at the facility, about eight years ago, and compared them to the results of the past year. We've managed to triple the life expectancy of these kids once they reach us, and more than quadruple their biotic output! It's incredible. We're truly making great strides in the human-biotic's evolution. It truly makes it all worth while.

But anyways, this entry is ridiculously long. It does feel good to put down that stuff about 5-SE though, I can already feel that load easing up. I guess that guy that gave me this little diary assignment when I got here knew what he was doing.

* * *

Entry 9

A kid got loose today, it was hell. Riot teams mobilized, the place went into lock down, the lights shut off, the docs were all losing their shit. I led team Delta into blue wing looking for the kid. It was a 13 year old boy who had busted out. Something about somebody mis-measuring the bio-inhibitor or something, doesn't really matter, that guy is dead now anyways.

The blue wing guys were testing the kid, nothing special really, and they removed the kid's shock collar after the inhibitor guy had injected him. Turns out, inhibitor guy fucked up, and as soon as the shock collar came off, the kid started blasting people. 6 docs dead, and 4 security guys. I was pissed.

The entire security force mobilized for this one. Six teams headed into blue wing ready for anything. Turns out, we weren't actually ready at all. Teams Alpha and Beta had managed to corner him when he crushed them with the ceiling. Both teams were out of the fight. Found out later that only one dude died, hooray Cerberus armor. My team was the next on-scene and as soon as we saw him a fucking war erupted. We had been granted to use of lethal force so we came in shooting, but this damn-near naked kid had this crazy shield up, a biotic barrier that my Centurion buddy had told me about in training.

We handled it pretty well as we swarmed the door, our rounds shooting off the kid in crazy directions. Sullivan went down as he was yanked off the ground and smashed into a bunch of lockers head first. The kid then started tossing shit at us. It was crazy, but I knew, I was the only one who could handle it. I folded my rifle into my back and grabbed my pistol and ran at the fucker.

The kid saw me coming and I saw his arm begin to tense. I was diving to the side before he even let that space magic shit fly. My implant was pumping and that biotic training was rushing in. I got close, as fast as I could, the kid kept managing to graze me with attacks but luckily my guys were still distracting him. I almost died when he managed to pick me up when I was just a few strides from him. His hands tensed up and that infernal blue glow grabbed me and began to pick me up. His last mistake. My guys managed a glancing shot while he was distracted with me and I dropped. Rushing forward, I punched my pistol arm through his weakening barriers, and shot him in the face.

The kid's face turned inside out and ruined the wall behind him. With the threat over, I called it in and I was nearly blinded as my suit fought to adjust to the lights coming back on. I got a commendation for that one. Pretty cool really. They said that I'd be headed to a spot in blue wing as soon as they got everything rebuilt. I'm climbing the ladder and I'm damn happy about it. They say I'll even get a private room once I hit blue wing, I'm excited.


End file.
